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Defending the Rights of Othersthe great powers, the jews, and international

minority protection, 1878–1938

carole finkThe Ohio State University

iii



PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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C© Carole Fink 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Typeface Bembo 11/13 pt. System LATEX 2ε [TB]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Fink, Carole

Defending the rights of others : the great powers, the Jews, and internationalminority protection, 1878–1938 / Carole Fink.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-521-83837-1 (hb)

1. World Politics – 19th century.2. World Politics – 1900–1945.

3. Minorities – Legal status, laws, etc. – Europe – History.4. Jews – Legal status, laws, etc. – Europe – History.

5. Minorities – Europe – History.6. Europe – Ethnic Relations. I. Title.

D359.7.F56 2004323.1192′404′09034 – dc22 2003056914

ISBN 0 521 83837 1 hardback

iv



Contents

List of Maps page xi

List of Photographs xiii

Preface xv

Abbreviations xxiii

A Note on Place and Personal Names xxvii

part one: from empires to new states

1 Prologue: The Congress of Berlin 3Curbing Russian Imperialism 3The Danubian Principalities, the Jews, and the Great Powers 5“A Test Case for Jewish Power” 15Article 44 22Aftermath 30

2 Bucharest, August 1913 39The Balkan Wars 39The Minority Question in the Age of European Imperialism 44The Jewish Struggle for Minority Rights 49Salonika 57The Treaty of Bucharest 61

3 The Great War 67A Revolutionary War 68Poland as a Combat Zone for National and Minority Rights 69Minorities Beleaguered 77Poland Reborn 80

vii



viii Contents

The Tide Turns: The Collapse of Russia, the Triumph ofZionism 83

German Victory in the East 90The Allies, the Poles, and the Jews 96

4 Lemberg 101A Chaotic Rebirth 102Pogrom 110The Response 115Enter Paderewski 121The Jews Mobilize 125

part two: the minority treaties

5 Paris 133Reshaping Eastern Europe 134Poland and the Peacemakers 135The Supreme Council 140Jewish Diplomacy 148The League of Nations and Minority Rights 151Palestine 160

6 Pinsk 171The Shootings in Pinsk 173Paderewski in Paris 186The Jewish Delegations 193Seeking a Solution 202

7 May 209The Committee on New States 211“We are Raising a Row” 217Warsaw/Paris 226“The Revolt” 232

8 The “Little Versailles” 237Germany and the Minority Treaty 238The League Guarantee 243Answering Poland’s Challenge 247The Treaty 257After All 260



Contents ix

part three: a new era of minority rights?

9 Geneva 267The “Minority States” 268Creating the “League System,” 1920–1925 274Defending Jewish Rights in Eastern Europe 283

10 Berlin 295Enter the Minorities Champion 296Reform? 309Excursus: Jewish Diplomacy under Threat 316Germany versus the League 322Exit from Geneva 328

11 Epilogue: The Road to Munich 337The Beck Declaration 338The League, the Great Powers, and the Threat to European

Jewry 343The Destruction of the League’s Minorities System 353Postmortem 357

Conclusions 359

Bibliography 367

Index 407

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1

Prologue

The Congress of Berlin

“We can only do a human work, subject like all such work, to the fluctuations ofevents.”

Otto von Bismarck

International minority protection, which reached its apogee after WorldWar I, had nineteenth-century roots. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878,the delegates combined the two principles of territorial readjustments andexternal control over internal affairs. The Great Powers not only checkedtsarist Russia’s drive into Southeastern Europe by imposing the old rulesof compensation and the balance of power; perceiving the dangers lurkingwithin the new borders they had drawn, the Powers also placed a stiff priceon the recognition of four successor states of the Ottoman Empire. Theheated debates, the conditions they imposed, and the subsequent results allmark the beginning of a new stage of modern European diplomacy.

curbing russian imperialism

Tsarist Russia went to war with the Ottoman Empire on April 24, 1877.The immediate cause was the Turks’ crushing of the Slavic uprisings inBosnia and Herzegovina, suppression of the Bulgarian insurrection, and therout of Serbia and Montenegro. This eighth Russo–Turkish War, extendingover almost two centuries, was not only the continuation of Russia’s effortsto seize the Straits but also represented a new form of tsarist expansionism.Spurred by the rise of Balkan nationalism, Russia’s leaders espoused the pan-Slav and Orthodox mission to liberate the lands and peoples of European

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4 Defending the Rights of Others

Turkey, with the goal of transforming the land bridge to Constantinopleinto a region of satellite states.1

The nine-month war, which lasted until January 1878, was an unexpect-edly evenly matched contest.2 After the Turks held the fortress of Plevnafor five long months against Russia and its reluctant ally Romania,3 the ex-hausted tsarist army reached the gates of Constantinople. But failing toachieve a decisive military verdict – a Koniggratz or a Sedan – Russiahad neither seized the Straits and Constantinople nor evicted Turkey fromEurope.

Russia’s newest Drang nach Suden also challenged the three Great Powers.Great Britain and France, the nominal protectors of the Ottoman Em-pire, were determined to deny Russia access to the eastern Mediterranean,whereas Austria–Hungary, with its own large Slav and Orthodox popula-tion, was insistent on retaining the status quo in Southeastern Europe.4 Allthree were outraged by the Treaty of San Stefano (March 3, 1878), dictatedby pan-Slav General Nicholas Ignatiev, which rearranged the map of theBalkans, creating a huge Bulgarian client state that stretched from theDanube to the Aegean and from the Black Sea to Albania and split Eu-ropean Turkey in two.5 Faced with British threats and keenly aware ofRussia’s economic and military weakness, Tsar Alexander II retreated fromthe pan-Slav gambit at San Stefano and submitted to Europe’s demands.6

Europe’s third major congress of the nineteenth century opened in Berlinon June 13, 1878. It lasted only one month because its agenda was limitedand almost everything had been prepared in advance. Among the participantswere the two exhausted combatants and five fresh bystanders determined tosolve the “Eastern Question” – the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire –

1. Full details of works with abbreviated titles are given in Sections 1B and 2 of the Bibliography.The standard study is Sumner, Russia and the Balkans; see also Geyer, Russian Imperialism, pp. 64–79;Durman, Time of the Thunderer, pp. 158–206; Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, pp. 143–73;MacKenzie, Tsarist Russian Foreign Policy, 1815–1917, pp. 68–81; LeDonne, The Russian Empire,pp. 137–40, 265–9, 324. A revisionist work by Weeks, “Russia’s Decision for War With Turkey,”describes a weak, politically divided regime that reluctantly took up arms against an obdurate OttomanEmpire, primarily to salvage its “national honor.”

2. Despite the dire state of Ottoman finances, British loans enabled the Porte to purchase armamentsfrom Germany and the United States. Rich, Great Power Diplomacy, p. 224.

3. Lying across Russia’s most expeditious southward invasion route, the United Principalities (Romania’sofficial name until 1878) tried to limit the damage of tsarist occupation and war with the Turks bycharacterizing its actions as a struggle for national independence.

4. Haselsteiner, “Zur Haltung der Donaumonarchie,” and Dioszegi, “Die Anfange der OrientpolitikAndrassys.”

5. Among the treaty’s other terms, Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania were to gain independence,Bosnia and Herzegovina were to become semiautonomous provinces within the Ottoman Empire,and Russia’s Romanian ally was to return southern Bessarabia to Russia.

6. Durman, Time of the Thunderer, pp. 219–44; Jelavich, Russian Foreign Policy, pp. 181–2; Goraıainov,La question d’Orient, pp. 229–51.

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Prologue 5

by a calibrated multinational partition, thus setting the tone for the nextBerlin Conference on Africa seven years later.7

The results were a triumph of Disraelian firmness and Bismarckian dis-cipline. Reaping the main rewards of its aggression, Russia extended itsBlack Sea coastline by regaining southern Bessarabia in the West and byannexing Ardahan, Kars, and Batum in the East. As to the Balkans, thecongress agreed on full independence for Serbia, Montenegro, and Roma-nia, and autonomy for a greatly reduced Bulgaria. But the other side prof-ited as well. The Ottoman Empire retained Macedonia8 as well as controlover the Straits, through which the British Fleet could pass at will into theBlack Sea. Moreover, the Turks’ defenders amply rewarded themselves, withBritain taking Cyprus, Austria–Hungary occupying Bosnia–Herzegovina,and France given the green light to occupy Tunisia.

The congress modified the Treaty of San Stefano in another significantway. Whereas Russia’s dictated treaty had been silent over minority rights,the Powers were determined to impose conditions regarding religious free-dom and civic rights in all the new states.9 In bringing forth a new politicalorder in the Balkans, the Great Powers added a major new ingredient to theagenda of European diplomacy10 (see Map 1.1).

the danubian principalities, the jews, and the great powers

Among the four newly liberated states, Romania was by far the princi-pal object of international concern over the issue of minority rights. Theprincipalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which formed the strategic trian-gle separating Russia and the Habsburg monarchy from the mouth of theDanube and the Straits, had over the past generation established the region’smost dismal record.

Romania’s ethnic and religious problems were shaped by its geography,history, and national culture. Following four centuries of Ottoman rule, the

7. See the critical appraisals by Munro, The Berlin Congress, and by Lord, “The Congress of Berlin,”pp. 47–69, prepared on the eve of the Paris Peace Conference by a key participant in the PolishCommission of 1919.

8. As distinct from the ancient kingdom of Alexander the Great, this Ottoman province since thefourteenth century was a heavily mixed region of Greeks and Slavs as well as of Christians, Jews,and Muslims, which, after 1878, became a caldron of national rivalries, repression, and terrorism.

9. The accord between Austria–Hungary and England signed on June 6 made this statement: “Lesdeux Gouvernements se reservent la faculte de proposer au Congres des mesures tendantes a assurerla protection des populations.” Austria. Haus- Hof- und Staats Archiv, Great Britain, VIII, fasc.170, quoted in Gelber, “German Jews at the Berlin Congress,” p. 221.

10. Preconference agreements in Medlicott, The Congress of Berlin and After, pp. 4–35; pessimistic verdictin Sumner, Russia and the Balkans, p. 565.

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Map 1.1. Southeastern Europe after the Congress of Berlin, 1878.

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Prologue 7

Danubian provinces in 1828 came under Russian control. Over the nextfour decades, tsarist officials introduced laws and administrative practicesthat promoted economic modernization but also imposed an exceptionallyharsh regime over Romania’s sizable Jewish population.11 During this criti-cal incubation period of local nationalism, the poets and publicists, followingthe trends of European romanticism, defined “Romanianism” in terms ofnative virtues (blood, soil, and orthodoxy). These they contrasted with thenegative images of pagan Turks, avaricious Hungarians, Austrians, and Rus-sians, predatory Greeks, and, especially, the alien Jews whose numbers hadswelled under Ottoman rule to about 10% of the population and almost halfthe population of the Moldavian capital Jassy (Iasi).12 For a brief period in1848, liberal and patriotic Jews and Romanians joined in the struggle forfreedom and a unified country, only to be crushed by tsarist and Ottomantroops.13

In 1856, the Romanian question moved to Europe’s center stage. Rus-sia, after its humiliating defeat in the Crimean War, was forced to evacuatethe Principalities, cede the mouth of the Danube (southern Bessarabia)to Moldavia, and renounce its claim as the protector of Christians in theOttoman Empire.14 However, when the victors failed to agree on a newgovernment, the Romanians took matters into their own hands. In 1858the assemblies in Wallachia and Moldavia established identical regimes anda year later elected a single ruler, Alexander Ion Cuza. Despite the fic-tion of Ottoman suzerainty and the blandness of the new official name(“The United Principalities”), Romanianism had triumphed. Europe, pre-occupied elsewhere, followed France’s lead and bowed to this peacefuldefiance15 (see Map 1.2).

But not without reservations. Since 1815, general statements on na-tional rights, religious toleration, and civil equality had become a standardcondition in international diplomacy. For example, in the Final Act of theCongress of Vienna, Britain and France had induced a pledge from the threepartitioning powers to “preserve the Polish nationality”16; in 1830, in returnfor recognizing Greece’s independence, the Powers had mandated freedom

11. Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 46–50.12. Volovici, Nationalist Ideology and Antisemitism, pp. 4–5.13. Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 50–4; Djordjevic and Fischer-Galati, Balkan Revolutionary Tradition,

pp. 111–12; Cohen, “The Jewish Question,” p. 202.14. Schroeder, Austria, Great Britain, and the Crimean War ; Curtiss, Russia’s Crimean War ; Baumgart,

The Peace of Paris.15. Hitchins, Rumania, pp. 6–7; Iancu, “Napoleon III et la politique francaise.”16. Webster, British Diplomacy, pp. 287–8, 290–1, 306–7; Muller, Quellen zur Geschichte des Wiener

Kongresses, pp. 203–97; Straus, Attitude of the Congress of Vienna Toward Nationalism, pp. 123–45.

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(1918)

(191

8)

SHS

(YUGOSLAVIA)

(1918)

P O L A N D ( 1 9 1 8 )

Map 1.2. Evolution of Romania’s frontiers, 1856–1920.

for all religions; and in 1856, the Powers bound the Ottoman Empire torespect the rights of non-Muslims.17

To be sure, these humane stipulations were largely unenforceable. Notonly were powerful states such as Russia and Turkey fiercely resistant tooutside interference, but also small states were jealous of their sovereignty.18

Moreover, even a powerful guarantor, such as Great Britain, was morereluctant to sow disorder than to fight for justice and human rights in

17. Claude, National Minorities, pp. 7–8; Macartney, National States and National Minorities, pp. 159–60.18. Pearson, National Minorities in Eastern Europe, pp. 130–1.

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Prologue 9

the East.19 Thus, against Russia’s egregious violations of Polish freedomin 1830 and 1863, there were only sterile diplomatic protests; and whenseveral thousand Maronite Christians were massacred in Lebanon in 1860and hundreds of rebels slaughtered in Crete in 1866, the western powerswere silent. Only the threat of Russian intervention over the “Bulgarianhorrors” sent western emissaries scurrying to Constantinople in a futile pleafor reforms.20

The Jewish question in European diplomacy was an entirely differentmatter. It too begins at the Congress of Vienna, where German–Jewishnotables had sought international support in their vain struggle to main-tain the rights they had gained under the French occupation.21 Instead ofstate power, Jewish diplomacy relied on the talents, courage, and connec-tions of private individuals who believed in the solidarity of their people.Newly emancipated themselves, and having only recently achieved eco-nomic and political success, these West European Jewish intercessors setout to support the rights of their coreligionists in Central, Eastern, andSouthern Europe and to persuade their rulers to introduce more liberalregimes. By the mid-nineteenth century, two leaders stood out, the Britishstockbroker–philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) and theFrench jurist and statesman, Adolphe-Isaac Cremieux (1796–1880), whohad joined forces in 1840 to combat a ritual-murder accusation in theOttoman Empire.22 During the Crimean War, the Rothschild bankers in

19. After several candid interviews with Alexander II over the repression in Poland in 1863, duringwhich the tsar parried expressions of public outrage in England and in France with his accusationsof the Socialist and Democratic plots against Russia hatched in Britain, British Ambassador LordNapier gave this advice to Earl Russell: “I prefer what I believe to be the interest of Englandand Germany to the aspirations of the Polish race . . . The Russian Empire is passing through a greattransformation . . . under a respectable Sovereign and an improving administration. A great error, naya great crime, has been committed in Poland, but we are justified in hoping that it was an exceptionalwrong in a general course of justice and conciliation . . . I see in the cessation of the Polish revolt,in the subordination of European interference to moderate aims, and in the maintenance of peace,the best guarantees for the solid progress of representative principles of government in Poland andin Russia.” Napier to Russell, St. Petersburg, April 6, 1863, in Bourne and Watt, British Documentson Foreign Affairs, Part I, Series A (Russia), p. 36. For the diplomacy of the 1863 Polish crisis, seeTaylor, Struggle for Mastery, pp. 133–41.

20. Krstitch, Les minorites, pp. 172–7, 181–4; also Harris, Britain and the Bulgarian Horrors; Pundeff,“Bulgarian Nationalism,” especially pp. 118–9.

21. Although the Jewish emissaries gained Prussian, Austrian, and even Russian support for an emanci-pation article in the constitution of the new German Confederation, the opposition of key Germanstates and the lack of British support produced the empty, unenforceable Article 16. Kohler, JewishRights; Baron, Die Judenfrage; Wolf, Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question, pp. 12–15, 17–18.

22. Frankel, The Damascus Affair. Montefiore and Cremieux also interceded, unsuccessfully, in the caseof Edgardo Mortara of Bologna, who was seized by the Catholic Church in 1858 after an allegedbaptism by a servant girl and subsequently became a priest. Kertzer, Edgardo Mortara; Iancu, “AdolpheCremieux et la defense des droits des juifs,” pp. 252–4.

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Britain and France urged their governments and the Porte to include Jewishrights in the peace treaty.23

Romania’s clash with the Great Powers began in 1856. On the eve ofthe Congress of Paris, Austria, Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empiremet in Constantinople to draft peace terms with Russia. Without warning,French Ambassador Edouard Thouvenel introduced several clauses pertain-ing to Moldavia and Wallachia that called not only for equal treatment andprotection of all religions, but also for equal access to public employment,equality of civil rights, particularly the right to property in all its forms, fornatives and foreigners, and equal political rights for all inhabitants not underforeign protection. Although mentioning no specific groups, Napoleon III’semissary had clearly endorsed full Jewish emancipation in Romania.24

Hailed by the British and French Jewish press, this proposal created anuproar in the Danubian provinces. The ruling princes of Wallachia andMoldavia bombarded the diplomats in Paris with protests and complaineddirectly to the British and French governments that granting civil, political,and property rights to the Jews would “bring the country to certain ruin.”These threats, strongly endorsed by the French and British consuls in Jassy(Iasi) and Bucharest, struck a sympathetic chord among the Powers, whichbeat an unceremonious retreat.25

Having won the first round, Romania revealed its future course by for-bidding the Jews to vote for the two assemblies that decided the country’sfuture. The National Liberals, deserting their 1848 Jewish allies, assumed astrongly anti-Jewish stance in their “practical politics.”26 In Moldavia, withits larger Jewish population, political leaders called for restricting citizen-ship to Christians, halting Jewish immigration, and even curtailing Jewishreligious practices.27

Two years later, in response to the merging of the two principalities,the European powers tried again to dictate terms to Romania. Once moreit was France, prodded by Baron James de Rothschild, which called forfull civil and political rights to all inhabitants without distinction of origin

23. Feldman, “Jewish Emancipation”; on the Rothschilds’ importance in the financing of the CrimeanWar, see Ferguson, House of Rothschild, pp. 71–82.

24. Feldman, “Jewish Emancipation,” pp. 46–7; texts in Ubicini, Principautes devant l’Europe.25. Article 23 of the Treaty of Paris in 1856 contained only the conventional provision on freedom of

religion without specifying equality of civil and political rights. Feldman, “Jewish Emancipation,”pp. 48–9; Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, p. 57. Compare Riker, Roumania, pp. 22–108.

26. On the growth of Romanian chauvinism, see Emerit, Victor Place et la politique francaise en Roumanie,pp. 80–1; Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 59–61; Fischer-Galati, “Romanian Nationalism,” especiallypp. 384–6.

27. Feldman, “Jewish Emancipation,” pp. 50–4.

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Prologue 11

or religion.28 This time it was tsarist Russia that thwarted the effort bycastigating the “moral and social” deficiencies of the Moldavian Jews.29 Inan awkward compromise, Article 46 was inserted into the 1858 Conventionof Paris:

All Moldavians and Wallachians are equal before the law and in matters of tax-ation, and shall have equal access to public employment in each of the princi-palities . . . Moldavians and Wallachians of all Christian faiths shall equally enjoypolitical rights. The enjoyment of these rights can be extended to other religionsby legislative enactment.30

Not unexpectedly, Romanians and Jews interpreted this text in oppositeways. Whereas the former denied that any special form of Jewish protectionhad been granted, the latter insisted that their existence and legal rights werenow recognized.31 To be sure, the seven signatory powers had cloaked theirdisagreement over Jewish emancipation in ambiguity. After excluding Jewishinhabitants from the category of “Moldavians and Wallachians” entitled tofull civil and political rights, in the last sentence they proposed a specific, ifunattainable, remedy.32 For the next two decades, this terribly vague articlelocked Romanians, Jews, and the Great Powers in a public debate over itsmeaning.

The reign of Alexander Cuza between 1859 and 1866 brought a briefgolden age to the United Principalities. The compromise candidate ofthe conservative landowners and the more-Nationalist-than-Liberal Forty-Eighters, Cuza quickly alienated his patrons by promoting a series ofprogressive, modernizing measures.33 A protege of Napoleon III, he also

28. On July 16, 1858, the son of Baron James de Rothschild forwarded the petition of seventeenMoldavian Jews to Foreign Minister Count Alexandre Walewski, chair of the Conference of Paris,who offered firm assurances of France’s support; Ibid., p. 57; Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 57–8.

29. Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, p. 58.30. Text in British and Foreign State Papers, Vol. 48, p. 120; minutes, pp. 81–132.31. Text of petition to the Romanian Chamber of Deputies in 1872, in Kohler and Wolf, Jewish

Disabilities in the Balkan States, App. I, pp. 98–101. Western Jews went even further, maintainingthat the article not only recognized the existence of non-Christians and accorded them civil rightsbut also constituted an international obligation by the United Principalities; Allgemeine Zeitung desJudenthums, Oct. 11, 1858, pp. 571–2.

32. Feldman, “Jewish Emancipation,” pp. 58–63.33. These included fairly sweeping electoral, legal, and agrarian reforms; the expansion of public edu-

cation and establishment of universities in Bucharest and Jassy (Iasi) and the nationalization of theestates of the monasteries, which placed a quarter of the country’s territory under state control.Fischer-Galati, “Romanian Nationalism,” especially pp. 384–5; Hitchins, Rumania, pp. 7–10.

Despite Cuza’s reforms, the state and the landowners still held about 66% of the land whereasthe peasants only a little over 33%, and usually the poorest properties in marshlands, sandy soil orthe steepest terrain. Otetea, Romanian People, pp. 388–9.

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attracted foreign capital that built up the provinces’ railways, harbors, andindustries.34

Cuza’s reign also brought about some minor improvements in the con-dition of Romanian Jews.35 The Civil Code of 1864 granted the right ofcertain categories of Jews to participate in municipal elections36; but noprogress was made on the issue of citizenship, and restrictions in rural areasmounted.37 The Cuza era also witnessed an escalation of verbal and physicalviolence. In April 1859, a ritual-murder charge triggered a bloody pogromin Galati (Galatz), during which the synagogue was destroyed, its torahburned, and numerous Jewish houses sacked. Instead of disciplining theculprits, the authorities arrested eleven Jews who were freed only after theprotests of foreign consuls. In 1865, twenty years before Eduard Drumont’snotorious book, La France juive, A. Kalimanescu published the brochure,Jidanii ın Romania,38 which termed the Jews “corrupt and corruptors,” thedestroyers of the wealth and soul of Romania; Kalimanescu pleaded withhis readers to retrieve their nation’s industry, capital, and commerce fromthe Jews. Another influential anti-Semite, Dionisie Pop Martian, attackedthe Jews as “foreigners, exploiters, and usurers.”39

The seven tumultuous years of Cuza’s reign also altered the structureof Romanian Jewry. In 1862, his government dissolved the local Jewishcouncils that had regulated the community’s fiscal and legal affairs withoutreplacing them with an arrangement similar to the French Consistoires. Theresult was to fracture the Jewish community into religious, social, cultural,and ethnic factions, with traditionalists vying against progressives and themore numerous Yiddish-speaking masses of Moldavia contesting their lessnumerous, more assimilated coreligionists in Wallachia, who aspired to em-ulate their western counterparts in becoming “Romanians of the Jewishfaith.”40

In February 1866, a coalition of disgruntled radicals and conservativesousted the reformer. Cuza’s French patron, distracted by his embroilments

34. Cameron, France and the Economic Development of Europe, pp. 322–4, 498–500; Riker, Roumania,p. 436.

35. At the beginning of 1864, the prince assured a Jewish delegation, “I would give you everything butI cannot,” while promising to work for “gradual emancipation.” Segel, Rumanen und seine Juden,p. 38.

36. These included individuals who had performed military service and obtained the rank of juniorofficer, graduated from a Romanian college or university, received a certificate or doctoral degreefrom a foreign university, or founded a factory or manufacturing plant useful to the state andemploying at least fifty workers.

37. Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 59–60.38. Jidan was a pejorative expression comparable to Yid.39. Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 60–1, 281–2.40. Monitorul Oficial, Dec. 7, 1864, quoted in Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, p. 62.

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Prologue 13

in Mexico, Italy, and Germany, acquiesced in the coup and in the electionof a foreign ruler. The chosen candidate was the shrewd and ambitioustwenty-seven-year-old Prince Charles of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, whonot only drew the Principalities into the Prussian orbit but also onto thelocal and European stage.41

Charles’ arrival in the Principalities, which coincided with the convo-cation of a constitutional convention, stirred a momentary hope amongRomania’s Jews that emancipation was at hand. In June 1866, the agedCremieux journeyed to Bucharest to plead with the legislators and theprince.42 The response was an immediate eruption of “spontaneous” anti-Jewish demonstrations, which included attacks on the new Bucharest syna-gogue and a virulent press campaign against “selling Romania to the Jews”that fueled legislative opposition to the modest measures proposed by PrinceCharles. Ion C. Bratianu (1821–91), the former Forty-Eighter who had be-come Romania’s most powerful nationalist politician, inaugurated the era ofofficial anti-Semitism. The Jews, according to Bratianu’s passionate speechto the chamber, were a “wound” and a “plague” to Romania not becauseof their low level of civilization,43 but because their huge numbers createdsocial disorder; Romania’s salvation lay in discriminatory legislation.44 Theappeals by Romanian Jews to the Protector Powers, who were absorbedin the Austro–Prussian war, were of no avail. The notorious Article 7 inthe Romanian Constitution of 1866 not only excluded foreign Jews fromever becoming citizens but also worsened the status of indigenous Jews byreducing their civil liberties and civil protection.45

Worse was to come. In September 1866, the Romanian governmentrevived the clause in the tsarist Organic Statute providing for the expulsionof native and foreign Jews on the grounds of “vagabondage.” The ensuingwave of roundups and deportations in the towns and countryside created an

41. Chirita, “Romania si Conferinta de la Paris”; older works include Djordjevic and Fischer-Galati,Balkan Revolutionary Tradition, p. 140; Otetea, Romanian People, p. 390; Taylor, Struggle for Mastery,p. 160; Henry, L’abdication du Prince Cuza.

The assemblies’ first choice in the spring of 1866 had been Count Philip of Flanders, thebrother of the king of Belgium, who declined the offer. Charles, who was distantly related toNapoleon III, was the second son of Charles Antony of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the head ofthe southern German and Catholic branch of the ruling house of Prussia who had entered its service.A Catholic with a Protestant wife, Charles, whose election was almost unanimously ratified in anational plebiscite, agreed to bring his children up in the Orthodox faith. Kremnitz, Aus dem LebenKonig Karls von Rumanien, Vol. 1, pp. 3–100.

42. Cremieux, reminding his interlocutors that in 1848, as a minister in a provisional government, hehad drafted the legislation freeing the black peoples in the French empire, urged generosity at thissignificant moment for Romania. Posener, Adolphe Cremieux, p. 186.

43. Bratianu reminded the legislators that the gypsies were to be granted citizens’ rights.44. Monitorul Oficial, June 20, 1866, quoted in Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, p. 68.45. Welter, Judenpolitik der rumanischen Regierung, pp. 17–46.

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uproar among French and British Jews who demanded Bratianu’s resignationand the restoration of basic civil rights. Backed by the British and Frenchgovernments, the eighty-three-year-old Montefiore journeyed to Bucharestin August 1867, only to receive empty assurances from Prince Charles andcriticisms from the local reactionary press for his attempt to create a “newPalestine” in Romania.46

For the next decade, the Jews of Romania became targets of a “coldpogrom” of systematic exclusion by laws, edicts, and restrictions as well asof disenfranchisement and threats of expulsion. Under the aegis of MihailKogalniceanu, another Forty-Eighter who had once helped draft the eman-cipation edict in Moldavia, circulars were drafted to “purge” the villages ofJews. Prohibited from residing permanently in the countryside, Jews couldnot own farms, vineyards, houses, or taverns; the bankrupt rural familieswho poured into the towns were arrested for spreading crime and infection.No better off were the urban Jews, who were restricted in their rights toown homes and movable property, barred from pleading in the courts, andprevented from becoming professors, lawyers, pharmacists, state doctors,and railroad employees. Although subject to military service, Jews couldnot become officers.47

After 1866, the exclusive mission of Romanianism gave precedence tostate creation over economic and social reform, thus sacrificing the peasantsas well as the Jews. Anti-Semitism offered an easy excuse for the principal-ities’ poverty, corruption, and despotism. Under the slogan “Romania forthe Romanians,” Romanian nationalism became synonymous with a viru-lent anti-Semitism based on ancient religious prejudice and contemporaryeconomic competition, political power struggles, and xenophobia.48

To the outside world, Romania became the prime exemplar of Balkandespotism and violence. Its actions not only defied the norms of toleranceand enlightenment that were being established in Western and Central Eu-rope49; they represented as brutal a regime as in the dark days of Nicholas Iof Russia.

Yet despite its German prince, Latin heritage, and Francophile ten-dencies,50 Romania was an essentially small, undeveloped Balkan countrylocated in a remote, but strategic corner of Southeastern Europe. Still under

46. Kremnitz, Aus dem Leben Konig Karls von Rumanien, Vol. 1, p. 201; Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 69–85.

47. Welter, Judenpolitik der rumanischen Regierung, pp. 46–64; Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, Chap. 5.48. Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 119–34; Fischer-Galati, “Romanian Nationalism,” especially pp. 385–6;

also Chirot, The Creation of a Balkan Colony; Iancu, “Races et nationalites en Roumanie,” especiallypp. 405–7.

49. Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, p. 87; Stern, Gold and Iron, p. 355.50. By the 1870s Bucharest referred to itself as the “Paris of the Balkans.”

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Prologue 15

multilateral control and nominal Turkish sovereignty, its leaders waited im-patiently for full independence, which could be granted only by the GreatPowers. Nevertheless, in the decade of Romania’s informal entry into theEuropean arena, a distinctive diplomatic pattern of interventionism and de-fiance had developed.

“a test case for jewish power”

In 1860, the Alliance Israelite Universelle (Alliance, or AIU) was founded toprovide an international defender for the beleaguered eastern Jews, andRomania was its prime concern.51 Cremieux, the Alliance’s first president,assembled copious evidence of discrimination and violence, confirmed byforeign emissaries, and implored the signators of the Paris Convention toprotest.52 In a letter on August 3, 1867, to Prince Charles’ private secretary,the French jurist Emile Picot, Cremieux vented his outrage and frustration,giving this warning:

Romania is a recent creation. . . . [There is] much to be done in this new country,above all measures of conciliation not acts of violence and hatred. . . . If there is noimmediate solution to this brigandage against the Jews we shall have to expose thisentire affair to all of Europe and to all the civilized nations; we will demand anactive intervention, which will not be refused.53

Romania became “a test case for Jewish power” just as a radical trans-formation was occurring within the international Jewish community. Fol-lowing Prussia’s victory over France in 1871, the Alliance ceased to be theexclusive spokesman of Jewish diplomacy, which was now dispersed amongindividuals and organizations in London, Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Rome,Brussels, Amsterdam, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, as well as inParis. This burgeoning Jewish leadership, animated by the liberal values ofthe era between 1789 and 1871, insisted that universal Jewish emancipationwas just, practical, and inevitable.54

Special committees for Romanian Jewry sprang up, with the main one inBerlin. On the initiative of German–Jewish leaders, an international congresswas convened in Brussels in October 1872 to coordinate their efforts. Thirtydeputies from eight countries55 dedicated themselves to the goal of achieving

51. Szajkowski, “Jewish Diplomacy.”52. Iancu, “Races et nationalites en Roumanie,” p. 398.53. Quoted in Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, p. 77. The occasion for this protest was the murder of a Jewish

prisoner in Galati on the pretext of his attempt to flee. See also Iancu, “Adolphe Cremieux, l’AllianceIsraelite Universelle et les juifs de Roumanie.”

54. Stern, Gold and Iron, p. 369.55. Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and the United States.

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“by all legal means, civil and political equality” for their coreligionists inRomania. Their three-part program consisted of direct political action byRomanian Jews (petitioning Parliament for rights); humanitarian aid andmelioration efforts from outside to combat the backwardness of RomanianJewry through education and “moral improvement”; and the accelerationand coordination of their lobbying efforts with their governments and withBucharest.56 This first “Jewish summit” in modern times provided as mucha grist for Romanian and other European anti-Semites as a demonstrationof Jewish power and Jewish influence.57

Another “solution” came from an unexpected source. The United States,which was neither party to the various treaties nor a major trading partnerwith Romania, had been a bystander until 1870. But following a directappeal by Jewish leaders, President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched an unpaidJewish consul, subsidized by the American–Jewish community, to do “mis-sionary” work among his oppressed coreligionists in Romania. The emissary,Benjamin Peixotto, a thirty-six-year-old Jewish lawyer of Sephardic back-ground from Cleveland and an activist in Jewish affairs, became imbuedwith the mission of emancipating Romanian Jews.58

Immediately after his arrival in Bucharest in February 1871, Peixottodedicated himself to improving the condition of Romanian Jewry. Despitecautions from the State Department, huge expenses, and the attacks of theanti-Semitic press, the novice diplomat plunged into local and national af-fairs. In the winter of 1872, it was Peixotto who sparked the protests byforeign emissaries and foreign Jewish organizations over the riots in Ismailand Cahul and the wrongful sentencing of several Jews.59 An advocate of“self-defense,” Peixotto preached the virtues of Jewish dignity and Jew-ish solidarity. His most notorious deed occurred in August 1872, when heimpulsively sounded out the Romanian government on a proposal by Amer-ican benefactors to facilitate the emigration of Romanian Jews to America.The Romanian Council of State gave a clever, noncommittal response andoffered free passports. The Jews of Romania and abroad were shocked byPeixotto’s initiative, which was roundly condemned by the Brussels Con-ference in October.60

56. Iancu, Bleichroder et Cremieux, pp. 28–9. 57. Stern, Gold and Iron, pp. 370–1.58. Gartner, “Consul Peixotto”; Iancu, “Benjamin Franklin Peixotto”; also Quinlan, “Early Ameri-

can Relations with Romania”; Funderburk, “United States Policy Toward Romania,” especiallypp. 309–11.

59. Both Ismail and Cahul were in southern Bessarabia, ceded by Russia and joined with Moldavia in1856.

60. Gartner, “Consul Peixotto,” pp. 79–92; Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 109–11, 115.

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Prologue 17

Population removal was not a new idea. Throughout the Middle Ages,Europe’s Christian kingdoms had expelled the Jews; and in the seventeenthcentury, Louis XIV had forced the Huguenots to leave France. In the nine-teenth century, it was the nation-state that turned an unfriendly eye onseemingly “unassimilable” religious and ethnic groups that stood in thepath of political and economic progress. The United States, for example,not only initiated the forced removal of its indigenous peoples but period-ically contemplated the possibility of returning black Americans to Africa.In Europe, government officials on the one hand and philanthropists, busi-nessmen, and religious leaders on the other devised colonization schemesto remove dissident religious groups or to rescue the oppressed by filling thedistant, “empty” lands of Russia and Palestine.61

Peixotto’s endorsement of large-scale emigration to America created acrisis in the Jewish world. By ignoring the problems of logistics and ex-pense, his rash initiative led to confusion and disappointment among po-tential immigrants. It also delivered a precious propaganda weapon to theRomanian anti-Semitic press, which rejoiced in the Jews’ dilemma and theinevitable benefits to the homeland: By leaving for foreign shores, the Jewswould free the land of their scourge; and by remaining they offered a publicdenial that they were being persecuted.62 But the most damaging aspect ofPeixotto’s scheme was its blow to the Alliance’s long struggle for politicaland civil equality in Romania and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the prospectof uncontrolled hordes of impoverished, unassimilable immigrants struck assensitive a nerve among western Jews as among non-Jews.63

The European governments, which had midwifed the United Principal-ities’ birth and remained Romania’s legal guardians, continued to monitorits internal turmoil. Their consuls were far more active in Romania thanin other parts of the Ottoman Empire as observers, critics, mentors, and

61. See Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, and Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind,pp. 1–42. On Russia, see Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers, Chap. 1; on Palestine, see Nawratzki,Judische Kolonisation Palastinas especially pp. 110–20; also, Ferguson, House of Rothschild, pp. 278–80.

62. “The American initiative places the Jewish invaders of Romania . . . before a dilemma which is mostfavorable for Romania: if the Jews emigrate in sufficient numbers to relieve the country of hundredsof thousands of parasites who live off the work of the Romanians, the country will be saved fromits greatest scourge; if they do not emigrate, which, unfortunately, is quite probable, they will thusprove to the world that they are not so unhappy and persecuted here and prefer to remain insteadof departing, even at our expense, to America rich and egalitarian par excellence”. Romanul, Aug.7–8, 1872, reprinted in Iancu, Juifs en Roumanie, pp. 296–8.

63. Until the end of the nineteenth century, western Jewry opposed anything but a “controlled move-ment of selected, vocationally trained young men.” Gartner, “Consul Peixotto,” pp. 93–4; alsoGartner, Jewish Immigrant in England, pp. 40–56; Szajkowski, “Attitude of American Jews to EastEuropean Immigration.” Peixotto left Romania on June 18, 1876, on the eve of the next Balkancrisis. Burks, “Romania and the Balkan Crisis.”